The present application relates to a nonvolatile semiconductor storage device, such as a flash memory, and a method of managing this nonvolatile semiconductor storage device.
Generally, in using a nonvolatile memory, management information, such as a logical-physical conversion table, is often created to relate the logical address of user data with the physical address in the nonvolatile memory and the created management information is used so as to prevent a particular area in the nonvolatile memory from being written excessively often and replace defect blocks, for example. It is also practiced to store this management information itself in the nonvolatile memory so as to save the time for reconfiguration at each power-on sequence, for example.
When user data is rewritten, the contents of the management information change, so that the correct reflection of a user data status onto the nonvolatile memory requires the rewriting of the management information in addition to the user data every time the rewriting of user data occurs.